Authentication required for every single OData.Feed() to ADO Projects after taking over dataflow

[yahadi1]

Hi Gurus,

I wanted to ask the commuinty if there is a better way to write OData.Feed() calls to avoid having to Configure Connection (Authenticate) every time for every OData.Feed() call to get Azure Devops projects data after taking ownership of a particular dataflow from a previous owner?

Currently, the Power Query code works by calling OData.Feed() on every project URL for all projects within an Azure Devops Organization. I am having to authenticate for every single call and it is taking a huge amount of time and I potentially have to do this for other dataflows too so if anyone knows any tips around this, then that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for all the help that follows.

[v-yinliw-msft]

Hi @yahadi1 ,

These credentials serve as the last barrier before accessing the data, all that is required is to guarantee the absolute security of the data.

So it needs to be configured every time, and it is recommended to use a Personal Access Tokens (PATs) as authentication.

In the documentation here Access Analytics data from Power BI Desktop - Azure DevOps | Microsoft Learn, we can see that

At the prompt, authenticate against the service. If you haven't already done so, see Client authentication options - Azure DevOps | Microsoft Learn

There are no other ways to skip this step.

For these three reasons we use a Personal Access Token over an Alternate Access Credential.

1.As part of good password management, these tokens automatically expire so you don't have to remember to change your password.

2.Since PATs are a generated password, you won't use a common password as part of your AAC, which means a more limited surface area for attack.

3.If you need to provide a diagnostic trace and forget to replace the value, you can revoke the credential. Doing so maintains secure access to Azure DevOps.

Hope this helps you.

Best Regards,

Community Support Team _Yinliw

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[yahadi1]

Hi @v-yinliw-msft 

Thank you for your response. 

From what I understand, of course the authentication is necessary but is there a way to perhaps authenticate once for one dataflow connecting to the Azure Devops Organization and then fetching all the projects' data without having to do inidividual calls for different projects within the same Organization?

I apologize that my question may have sounded like I am trying to avoid having to authenticate multiple times. It is more around writing efficient OData.Feed() calls in the same dataflow to the same Organization and getting multiple projects' data. At the moment I have a separate OData.Feed() for each project in the same Power Query and I am suspecting that there is surely a better way than to write sequential calls to the same Organization. 

I hope that makes more sense.